Wednesday, 27 June 2012

Asian Nations Cup Round 4

In round 4, we took the Black pieces against a strong Kazakhstan team comprising 3 GMs and 2 2500ish IMs. On board 1, Zhang Zhong repeated his slightly unorthodox treatment against GM Rinat Djumabayev's Catalan. After a couple of slight inaccuracies, the young Kazakh GM managed to wreck Black's queenside pawn structure. With his two knights controlling Zhang Zhong's bishops, he took control and was close to winning the game. However, our top board again demonstrated his class by being extremely resilient:

On board 2, I was the white side of a staid Italian game against GM Anuar Ismagambetov. Black played the popular 5...0-0, 6...d5 line and equalised quite easily after I showed no opening knowledge whatsoever. In fact, I had to start defending after Black's pieces got a bit too active and I managed to find counterplay in time.

On board 3, Daniel was slowly suffocated by IM Rustam Khustnutdinov but he certainly had his chances:

Meanwhile, Peng Kong went down on board 4 on the white side of a Qc2 Nimzo-Indian against IM Kiril Kuderinov. Peng Kong played in his usual solid style and a sleepy position where nothing much seemed to be going on appeared in the game. However, Kuderinov has gained a huge time advantage after blitzing out his opening moves and this rattled Peng Kong to a certain extent:

Round 4
Kazakhstan 3 Singapore 1

After round 4, the Singapore team is ranked 7 which means a top 6 finish is still very much possible.

The next day was a rest day and the blitz event was held in the evening. We had a lot of fun during the blitz and the men's team eventually finished 6th. For more info, see here. I managed to beat my good friend and 2600+ GM Zhou Weiqi in round 2 but with apologies to my Indonesian friends, I simply cannot resist showing my biggest cheapo ever in blitz:

In round 5, we were paired against a youthful Mongolian team which is one of our competitors to secure that coveted 6th position. More to follow.....